5 things about Protection Warriors that still rock the house

People will also be impressed at how neatly you line mobs up for Shockwave, once you have got the hang of it. The neat mob patterns and the stun give them 5s to oo and ahh at your amazing add control. Milk it.

Even if you don’t take Veneretio‘s word for it (and you should, he’s one of the most authoritative protwarrior posters out there, and he’s particularly good at explaining the reasoning behind his thinking), my corroborating evidence is that my protadin friend was whining to me about this last week.

If a protection paladin whines that you are better than him at anything, it’s:

probably true

probably going to be given to paladins next patch so enjoy it while it lasts

2. We are very mobile. Between Charge and Intervene, we can move much more quickly around an encounter than any other tank.

3. Spell Reflect. An unusual and very fun ability, I don’t think it will ever be necessary on a raid boss but the reason it is now so situational is purely down to current content. This wasn’t the case in TBC and who knows what the future holds? Improved Spell Reflect is still good fun on Malygos and the voidie boss in the Violet Hold. Certainly if more bosses in future allow for spell reflect, it will be a way for Blizzard to increase the damage that warriors do while tanking.

It also hasn’t come up much in Wrath but spell reflect is a great way to build threat on groups of casters, assuming that they all are nuking you (ie. you just pulled one). We used this to good effect in Magister’s Terrace, which did have groups of casters as trash mobs, and it could easily come up later in this expansion.

4. Easier to heal? I put a question mark on this because I’m not convinced, but I was asking some of our healers for their opinions and they felt I took less damage. Or at least they had the perception that they didn’t have to work as hard to heal me. And particularly in heroics, they had a lot of confidence in warriors’ ability to pick up unexpected adds/ patrols quickly. This comes down to the great snap AE threat and mobility, but don’t think it isn’t appreciated.

Now to put this in context, a warrior does take less damage than a druid (they have huge health pools to soak but we have plate and a shield), death knights can stack up their amazing cooldowns but they don’t always have something in reserve for unexpected situations, and paladins take less spikey damage but tend to prioritise shield block over avoidance. This is all highly dependent on how you gear — a druid could drop some stamina to pick up high avoidance but most of them don’t, preferring to play to their strengths.

Like I say, I’m not entirely convinced but when someone hands you a compliment, accept it graciously and puzzle it out later. Perception is a powerful thing.

Yeah, I think it’s very easy to feel gimped if you spend much time reading forums. And in truth it does annoy me that we’re lagging behind a bit on damage/ threat. I do see the other tanks pulling ahead a bit.

But I do /love/ playing my warrior. It really is the most fun class for me. And when I bunk off doing useful stuff and go run a few heroics just for the heck of it, I realise just how good she is.

1. Definately true. With TC + Shockwave you’ll out-threat a Pally or a DK for about 4-5 seconds before they pull off you.

2. Warbringer is also a great way to get some quick rage in the middle of combat.

3. Too many effects in PvE are immune to it. I would trade Spell Reflect for Anti-Magic Shell any day of the week to have something that is actually going to work when I want it/need it to.

4. Definitely depends on your gear. And your healer’s playstyle.

5. The Valorous Dreadnaught set reminds me too much of Wrath. I’ll stick with my instincts on this one, the designer who is behind the shoulders for the warrior tier pieces needs to be put in stocks. Also, WTB a plate helm that doesn’t look stupid on a tauren.

As someone who knows next to nothing about warriors (in spite of hanging out in the tank group for over a year as the ‘lock on imp duty; you’d think osmosis would have kicked in, or something…), I thank you for the insight! :)

Now … do you think you could have a conversation with my raid’s prot warrior? >.> He sulked for a week when we we asked him to tank the adds on Sarth 3D, claiming that the paladin was the better add-tank and he, the warrior, should be on drakes instead.

As for #4, I personally find paladins the easiest to heal, followed by warriors, druids and death knights, in that order. That’s a huge over-generalization though, since it’s really dependent on gear.

As a feral tank, I know that the view of bears is that they are big health pools, but can be mana sponges as far as healing. I’m the big bear in Pix Executioner’s guild, and I definitely don’t gear/gem/enchant stamina heavy. I’d much rather have a steady damage input than just a huge hp pool that can deal with spikes of damage. Our main priest healer, who happens to also be my roommate, likes this. In fact, one heroic VH run he went off to get a drink from the fridge for a portal. Not an issue at all. For those that don’t much like healing bears, I’m sorry they haven’t run into ones prioritizing like I am.
As far as warrior tanks go, I don’t know squat about playing them, but know that they can be awesome to tank beside. Double tank heroics for the win!

@Kelarr Rawr for bears :) Actually I /love/ tanking 10 mans alongside a feral, it just feels like the two classes work very well together to me.

I also do run a lot of heroics with my feral friend, in her bear spec. We don’t always double tank them (although it’s been known) but we enjoy having the extra flexibility for her to jump into bear as needed.